An employment law expert has warned that workers who steal another colleague’s lunch could end up costing them their job.
Melbourne-based lawyer Roxanne Hart warned that workplaces often have strict policies prohibiting this law.
He added that stealing a coworker’s packed lunch may seem harmless, but it amounts to workplace theft.
“You can be fired for serious misconduct on the spot, and serious misconduct includes theft, but for theft to be proven, an employee would have to believe, on the balance of probabilities, that you intended to steal it.” , said. yahoo.
He said clever lunch thieves typically try to avoid blame when confronted by a company’s human resources department.
‘Any employee caught stealing someone else’s lunch will simply say, “Oh, I didn’t realize that wasn’t mine,” or “I thought this was communal,” and then the employer will potentially have some doubt about the intent of the theft.
“But technically it is a serious offense to steal in the workplace.”
Hart believes most first-time refrigerator raiders would get a warning when they get caught.
Labor and business lawyer Roxanne Hart urged would-be lunch thieves to think twice before stealing their colleagues’ food.
But, he warned, the penalty could increase if more robberies are committed.
In a Reddit thread for Australian businesses, an office worker revealed that another staff member had stolen the remains of her daughter’s birthday cake from a labeled container in the refrigerator.
Then he revealed the most detestable detail: his co-worker had taken the piece with the most icing.
“I need to know that karmic retribution is happening somewhere in the world,” he wrote.
Her post was then inundated with dozens of similar stories.
“I used to work temping,” said one reader.
“I sent a temporary job to a client for a couple of weeks and received reports that lunches were missing from their refrigerator.”
They revealed that the temporary worker’s contract expired after a month, but the employer then reported that a strange smell had begun to linger behind the photocopier.
“The photocopier was removed from the wall and the remains of the stolen lunches had been pushed between it and the wall and were rotting,” they explained.
“The customer reviewed the security cameras and saw the employee stealing lunches from the refrigerator, eating everything he could and stuffing the leftovers behind the copier.”
This common crime can carry harsh penalties if bosses and human resources staff can prove that a worker was stealing lunches.
Another office worker revealed that his office’s resident bandit was fired after a reign of terror, but refused to leave quietly.
‘There was a guy at my work who was strongly suspected of stealing people’s lunches and snacks from the refrigerator, but he was never caught in the act, so he couldn’t be disciplined.
‘About a year later, the guy was fired for other reasons, and apparently he was very angry about it. That day they raided the refrigerator and stole food from many people for the first time in a year.
‘That was a while ago and there hasn’t been any problems since. Now it’s pretty obvious that it was this guy who committed one last robbery on the way out.
One reader revealed the time his colleague absentmindedly ruined someone else’s lunch.
‘A colleague accidentally took someone else’s lunch and put it in the microwave.
“When he took it out of the microwave he realized that it was someone else’s lunch, a salad, which in no way should be heated in the microwave.
‘He put it back in the fridge, but the owner of the salad took it out of the fridge for lunch before it cooled down. He wasn’t happy.’